“Are we going to camp here, or go on?” Skit asked. The question was pertinent; if this had been an expedition with two Heralds, they would camp now, while there was still light. But it wasn’t; Wintermoon had abilities and a resource in his bondbirds that no Herald had.
“We go on,” Wintermoon replied promptly. “Although we will feign to make camp. If there is anyone watching us, they will be deceived. Then once true night falls, we shall move on.”
It didn’t take them long to unload the packs and Cymry’s saddle and make a sketchy sort of camp; Wintermoon unstrung and tied out a hammock, and padded it with a bedroll, then produced a second one and guided Skif in setting it up. That done, they cleared a patch of forest floor and built a tiny fire.
As they sat beside the fire, one of the owls lumbered into their clearing, laden with a young rabbit. It dropped its burden at Wintermoon’s feet, and before it had taken its perch on his shoulder, the second followed with a squirrel in its talons.
“Well,” Wintermoon chuckled, as the second owl dropped its burden beside the first and flew to a perch in the tree above Wintermoon’s head, “It seems that my friends have determined that we shall have a meal, at least.”
“That’s fine by me,” Skif said, and grinned. “I was about to dig out those trail rations.”
“I thought I heard something growling - I thought it might be a beast in the bushes. ‘Twas only your stomach,” Wintermoon teased as he began gutting and skinning the rabbit. Both owls hopped down from their perches to stand on the ground beside him, waiting for tidbits.
They took the proffered entrails quite daintily; seeing that, Skif had no hesitation about picking up the squirrel and following the scout’s example. When the darker of the two owls saw what he was doing, it joined him, abandoning Wintermoon.
Skif got two surprises; the first, that this little “squirrel” was built more like a rabbit than the scrawny creatures he was used to - and the second, that the owl took so much care in taking its treats from him that its beak never touched his fingers. “Which one have I got?” he asked Winter-moon. “How hungry is he likely to be?”
“K’Tathi,” the scout replied without looking up. “The scraps will suffice for now; they will hunt again after we make our second camp, this time for themselves. Give him what you wish to spare from your meal.”
Head, entrails, and the limbs from the first joint out seemed appropriate. K’Tathi took everything that was offered with grace, never getting so much as a spot of blood on his gray-white feathers. Skif offered the skin as well, but the owl ignored it, so Skif quickly tossed it into the bushes as he saw Wintermoon do. That would have been foolhardy if they had been planning to stay, for the bloody skins might well attract something quite large and dangerous. But since they weren’t - well, there was sure to be something that would find the skin worth eating, and if there was someone watching them, possibly following them -
Well, if they try to go for the camp and there‘s something big, with teeth, still here, they‘re going to get a rude surprise.
When he finished his task, he once again followed Wintermoon’s example and spitted it on a sturdy branch to hold over the fire. Meanwhile, the sun continued to set, the sky above the trees turning first orange, then scarlet, then deepening to vermilion-streaked blue. By the time the meat was done, the sky was thick with stars.
He was halfway through his dinner when Wintermoon said abruptly, “I envy you, did you know that?”
He looked up, a little startled, into the ice-blue eyes of the man across the fire. There was no sign of Wintermoon’s dinner, other than the pile of small, neatly-stacked bones at his feet, each of them gnawed clean.
What did he do, inhale the thing?
On the other hand - it was in the interest of the scout’s survival to learn to eat quickly. No telling when a meal might be interrupted by an uninvited, unwelcome dinner-guest.
“Why?” he asked, puzzled by the question. “What is there about me to envy? I’m nothing special, especially around Heralds.”
“My - liaisons - tend to be brief, and informal,” the scout replied. “One reason I wished to guide you was because Starspring returned my feathers, and I am at loose ends.”
Skif wondered if he should tender sympathy, surmising from the content that “returned his feathers” meant his lover had dissolved the relationship. But Wintermoon evidently saw something of his uncertainty in his expression and shook his head, smiling.
“No, this was not painful. I have no wish to avoid the Vale, or her. But I simply have no partner now, and there is no one else I care to partner with at the moment. So I am at loose ends, and would just as soon have other things to think on.” He wiped his fingers clean on a swatch of dry grass, and tossed it into the fire. “That is what I envy you, do you see,” he said, watching the grass writhe and catch. “Strong feelings. I have never experienced them.”
Skif coughed, a little embarrassed. “I don’t know that this is anything other than infatuation or attraction to the exotic.”
“Still, it is strong,” Wintermoon persisted. “I have never felt anything strongly. Sometimes I doubt I have the ability for it.”
The statement was offered like a gift; Skif was wise enough to know that when he saw it. He searched his mind for an appropriate response.
:The birds,: Cymry prompted.
“You feel strongly about Corwith and K’Tathi, don’t you?” he countered.
Wintermoon nodded slowly as if that simply hadn’t occurred to him in such a context.
“Well then,” Skif said and gestured, palm upward. “Then I wouldn’t worry. You’re capable. The way I see it, we all feel strongly about things, we just might not know we do. Valdemar is like that for Heralds; we lay our lives down willingly for our country and Monarch when we must, but most of the time, we just don’t think about it. If you encounter someone you can feel strongly about, you will. You haven’t exactly been given much of a choice of potential mates what with three-fourths of the Clan gone, and your tendency to, well, stay to yourself.”
“True.” The scout sat back a little, and only then did Skif realize, as he relaxed, that he had been tensed. “My father thinks that being born without the Gift for magery shows a serious lack in me. Sometimes I wonder if I have other, less visible lacks.”
Before Skif could change the subject, Wintermoon changed it for him - to one just as uncomfortable. “What do you intend when we find Nyara?” the scout asked, bluntly. “We shall, I promise you. I am not indulging in vanity to say that I am one of the finest trackers of k’Sheyna.”
“I - uh - I don’t know,” Skif replied. “Right now, to tell you the truth, all I’m thinking about is finding her. Once we do that - “ He shook his head. “It just gets too complicated. I’m going to worry about it when it happens. What she says and does when we find her will give me my direction.”
“Ah,” the scout replied, and fell silent.
After all, I spent less than a week in her company, he thought. I could have been misreading everything about her.
Except that she had saved his life at the risk of her own. She’d attacked her own father, a creature that had held absolute control over her all of her life, and for Skif’s sake.
She’d gone after Falconsbane with nothing; nothing but her bare hands -
- or rather, claws -
And thoughts like that made him realize all over again just how alien she was, yet that realization didn’t change how he felt in the least. Whatever it was, it was very strong and very real.
What’s going to make a difference is what’s happened to her - and what happens to us. If she‘s handling the things her father did to her. And if we can find someplace where people will accept her - and maybe even us.
That place might not be Valdemar; that was something he was going to have to admit. They might not be able to deal with someone who had tufted, pointed ears, catlike eyes, and a satiny-smooth pelt of very, very short fur. It wasn’t obvious, but a
close examination would show it. The Heralds were open-minded, but were they open-minded enough for that? To accept someone who looked half animal?
And he was going to have to go home eventually. . . .
That question kept him thinking until Wintermoon shook his shoulder. After that, he was too busy breaking camp and following the scout through the darkness to worry about anything else. And when they finally made camp again, he was too tired to think at all.
Chapter 5
Wintermoon, Corwith, & K’tathi
The two hunters began using a different pattern than a follower might expect; they were on the move from about mid-afternoon to after midnight. With the owls helping him, Wintermoon was completely happy doing most of his scouting after darkness fell, and even Skif’s night-vision gradually improved with practice. He would never be Wintermoon’s equal, but he grew comfortable with searching the forest in the darkness. There were advantages to this ploy that outweighed the disadvantages; the strongest advantage being that with K’Tathi and Corwith scouting for them, there was nothing that was going to surprise them - and nothing that would be able to follow them easily. Few creatures hunted the night by preference, and those few, though formidable, could be watched for. So for several days, they hunted and camped, and remained unmolested even by insects. But Skif knew that the situation could not last. Sooner or later, they were going to run into one of the kinds of creatures that had driven the Tayledras borders back in the first place. Sooner or later, something was going to come hunting them.
That, in fact, was what he was thinking when they paused along a deer trail, and Wintermoon sent the owls up to quarter the immediate vicinity, looking for disturbed areas or other signs of someone who was not especially woodswise. Cymry began acting a little nervous, casting occasional glances back over her shoulder. But Wintermoon, who was sitting quietly on Elivan, didn’t seem to sense anything out of order.
His first real warning that something really was wrong and that Cymry just wasn’t being fidgety was when Wintermoon suddenly tensed and flung up his hand, and Corwith came winging in as fast as slung shot, landing on his outstretched arm, and hissing with fear and anger. Skif held out his hand as Wintermoon had asked him to do if one of the owls ever came in fast and showing distress. K’Tathi arrived a moment later, and K’Tathi hit his gauntleted wrist as if striking prey. It was the first time that the owl had landed on Skif, and nothing in his limited experience in hawking with merlins and kestrels prepared him for the power and the weight of the bird as it caught his wrist and landed. Those thumb-length talons closing - even with restraint - on his wrist could easily have pierced the heavy leather of the gauntlet. They did not although the claws exerted such powerful pressure that Skif could not possibly have rid himself of the bird short of killing it. K’Tathi hissed angrily, and swiveled his head away from Skif, pointing back the way he had come.
Before Skif could ask what was wrong, Wintermoon cursed under his breath and the dyheli stag he rode tossed its antlers and reared, its eyes shining in the moonlight, wide with fear. Wintermoon kept his seat easily, but Corwith flapped his wings wildly to keep his balance.
Tilredan, the second stag, the one laden with their provisions and extra gear, bolted; it was Skif’s turn to swear, and not under his breath. But he had reacted too soon; in the next breath, Wintermoon’s mount followed the other stag, and Skif only had Cymry’s warning Mindcall of :Hold on!: before she was hot on his heels.
Hold on? With an owl on one arm?
He dropped the reins - useless in a situation like this one - and grabbed for the pommel of the saddle with his free hand, deeply grateful that he had not given in to Wintermoon and exchanged Cymry’s old saddle for a Shin’a’in model. Shin’a’in saddles had no pommel to speak of. ...
K’Tathi continued to cling to his wrist, mercifully refraining from using his wings to keep his balance. One strong buffet to the head from those powerful wings would lay Skif out over Cymry’s rump before he knew what had hit him.
Instead, the owl hunched down on the wrist, making himself as small as possible, leaning into the wind of their passing. Skif tried to bring him in close to his body, but he wasn’t sure how much K’Tathi would tolerate.
:What in - : Skif began.
:A pack of something, that scented us and is hunting up our backtrail,: Cymry answered shortly. :Not something we‘ve seen before, but something Wintermoon and the others know. Worse than wolves, worse than Changewolves. And smart - we‘re running for a place where we can defend ourselves. K’Tathi found it just before Corwith sighted the pack.:
He could only hope that an owl’s idea of what was defensible and theirs was the same; sheer cliffs were fine if you could scale them, and a hole in a tree would be all right if the tree was the size of a house, but otherwise they’d be better off making a back-to-back stand.
And he hoped his idea of “nearby” and the owl’s was the same, too.
For behind him, he heard an uncanny keening sound; not baying, not howling, not wailing - something like all three together. The noise gave him chills and made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and it sounded as if it was coming from at least eight or nine throats. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw nothing, but his imagination populated the darkness. If he heard eight, how many were really in the pack? Twelve? Twenty? Fifty?
K’Tathi clutched his wrist a little harder, and the deadly talons pricked him through the leather. This was not a good way to carry the bird, but there was no way to turn K’Tathi loose to fly. The dyheli were nearly a match for a Companion in speed, and they were going flat-out; neither owl could have hoped to keep up with them by flying through the canopy, which was why both birds were clinging desperately to their perches on his wrist and Wintermoon’s. But K’Tathi, at least, was having a lot of trouble holding on. If the owl exerted a little more pressure -
:Cymry! Can you talk to K’Tathi?: he asked Cymry, frantically.
Her mind-voice was colored with surprise and annoyance at what probably seemed like a supremely inappropriate question. :Yes, but this is no time - :
He interrupted her. :Tell him not to move, I’m going to try something with him, before he goes through my wrist.:
He pulled his arm to his chest, and brought the bird in close to his body, sheltered against his body. This left the owl unbalanced, with its face shoved against his tunic, but K’Tathi displayed his agility and intelligence; somehow he managed to get himself reversed, so that his head faced forward and his tail and wings were tucked down between Skif’s wrist and his chest. Now the bird wasn’t having to fight the wind by himself, he was braced against Skif. The painful pressure on Skif’s wrist relaxed.
That takes care of one problem.
Cymry’s muscles bunched and flexed under his legs, the sound of hooves drowning out anything else except the chilling cries behind them. The wailing behind them seemed closer. Skif didn’t ask Cymry if it was; it wouldn’t make any difference. They’d either reach safety in time, or not.
He just wished he knew how far it was to that promise of “safety.” If he knew, he might be able to guess whether they had any chance of making it, or whether it might be better to turn and make a stand.
And he wished that he had Wintermoon’s night-sight, far superior to his own. To him, the moon-filled night was full of shadows his eyes couldn’t penetrate. There could be nothing in those patches of darkness, or an enemy, or a hiding place. Though the moon was bright, there were still enough leaves on the trees to keep most of the light from reaching the ground.
The pack behind them cried again; this time there was no doubt in his mind about the peril of their situation. They were closer; if he looked back, he might be able to see them. The brush obscuring the path behind them didn’t seem to be slowing the pack at all. In fact, they were probably breaking a trail for the pursuers to follow along. He’d learned long ago that being the pursued in a chase was more difficult than being the pursuer.
He crouch
ed a little lower over Cymry’s neck; as low as he could without flattening the owl. K’Tathi seemed to realize what he was doing, and didn’t object or straggle, only giving him a warning stab with his talons when he crouched too low for the owl’s comfort. Soft feathers pressed against his chin, and K’Tathi hunched down on his wrist so that the bird’s chest-feathers warmed his hand.
He glanced up; saw the gray bulk of a rock formation looming ahead of them through the trees. In this light, it looked very like the one in which he and Elspeth had sheltered when they first arrived in Tayledras territory. A moment later, he saw that this one was bisected by a good-sized crack. Just like the one he and Elspeth had used.
He seemed to spend a lot of time hiding in rock crevices lately. Whatever had happened to hiding in rooms, behind drapes, or under furniture?
He had a moment to think - Oh, no, not again - and then Cymry braced all four legs for a sudden stop, skidding to a halt beside the dyheli. At least the owls did seem to have some idea of what constituted a good shelter for the rest of the party. The crevice would be a little crowded for three plus the two humans, but it was better than facing what howled on their backtrail with nothing to protect their backs!
All three of them crowded into the narrow crevice between two halves of a huge boulder; the rock was easily two stories tall, and the crevice ended in the stone face of a second stone that was even taller. There was barely enough room for Cymry to turn around, but that was fine; less room for them meant less room for those things out there to try to get past them.
A strangled hoot and the booting of K’Tathi’s head against his chest reminded him to turn the poor owl loose. He raised his arm and launched it clumsily into the air, thrown off by the confined quarters and the fact that the owl was considerably heavier than a merlin. It wasn’t much of a launch, or much help to the owl in gaining the air; K’Tathi hit him in the side of the head with a wing, recovered, and got free of the crevice, just as the pack reached them.
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